Dear Me,

    Hello all.  So this is the first chapter of the second part of Shakespeare's biography.

Cheers

Murielle

Shakespeare: A Biography

by

Peter Ackroyd

Part Two

Chapter 18:  To Tell Thee Plaine.  I Ayme to Lye with Thee

At some point after the wedding Shakespeare made his way to London.  We do not know the year of this very significant transition, but he must have left Stratford by 1586 or 1587.

There are references in his plays to an unhappy separation immediately after a wedding but that might just be a dramatic device.  It's more than likely that William and Anne, still pregnant, returned to the house on Henley street as it was customary for a newly married couple lacking their own resources would be offered lodging from the groom's father.  With Shakespeare being such a young groom, this must have been necessary.

The newly married couple moved into the back of the extension of the house, with their own upstairs room and staircase.  There was not much privacy was not itself considered important.  It was already a large family, with Shakespeare four younger siblings, as well as four adults but this was the kind of household in which his mother and wife would have been used to.  The menage was soon enlarged by Shakespeare's three children so it would have been pretty crowded and noisy.  His first daughter, Susannah, was born in May 1583, 

The cause of religion manifested itself in a more public and more dangerous context in the autumn of that year.  Margaret Arden, whom Shakespeare's mother claimed some affinity, had married a Catholic gentleman from Warwickshire.  This young man had some extreme views.  In October 1583, he set out with the express intention of killing Elizabeth I.  He stupidly announced this ambition to anyone who cared to listen and as a result was taken to the Tower of London.

The consequences were felt by his unfortunate family.  A few days later a warrant was issued for the search of all suspected houses in Warwickshire.  The Arden family was arrested.  They were tried at the Guildhall of London and were found guilty of treason.  Margaret's mother was pardoned but her father was hanged, drawn and quartered.

Did Shakespeare's father come under suspicion?  Did Shakespeare?  It was a time of terror for anyone even peripherally concerned or related.  It may well have been at this point that John Shakespeare concealed his Catholic testament in his attic.  

If ever there was a time when William Shakespeare might have appreciated the relative anonymity of the capital, then this was it.  But he chose to remain in Stratford for the duration.  In February 1585, his twins Hamnet and Judith were born and baptised in the parish church.  The birth of his twins suggests that he was still with his wife in the spring of 1584,  But no children were conceived by the Shakespeares after the date.  He didn't follow the pattern of the time, in which large families were common.  At the birth of her twins Anne was only thirty and well within the age of child-bearing.  It may have been that the birth of the twins had injured her somehow.

In the conditions of Henley Street, however, it would have been inevitable that Anne and her husband would have shared a bed and since there  was no form of birth control, they may have abstained by mutual consent.  All evidence suggests that Shakespeare was highly sexual in nature so it is unlikely, being a man in his early twenties, would not have abstained without very good reason.  The better explanation is also the more obvious one.  He was not there.  So where was he?